Defending Umbridge
by glanmire
Summary: Telling the villain's story from their perspective.
1. Chapter 1

She doesn't have a rich backstory. There is no reasoning behind her actions, nothing we can use to excuse her behaviour. She just seem to be purely evil.

That is, until we examine her actions.

Well, her most memorable physical characteristic is her love of the colour pink and kittens, and she dresses accordingly. There is nothing evil about this in anyway, yet it evokes a gut-reaction of disgust in most.

You could argue that some people just despise femininity, and that this is no different, but it's generally accepted that it's the contrast that people loathe, the hypocrisy of it; the smiling puppies and torture, pink ribbons and punishment.  
So before her personality was revealed, she was already on bad footing.

Some of her early grievous offences include being rude to Dumbledore as he welcomed her to the school.  
Malfoy has been noted for ignoring Dumbledore's speeches too, but he does not get any backlash for it, unsurprisingly.  
But that is only the beginning.  
Then, she goes to inspect the other teachers. Bear in mind that this is her job, she is paid to do this. She decides to put two teachers on probation.

One is clearly unqualified for the job, and seems to only have got in based on the fact that her great grandmother was good at the subject. That is not sufficient for her, nor should it be for anyone. She rightly does not understand why she is vilified for this.

The second teacher is a man. He has put his students in dangerous situations, has paid no attention to the curriculum, and some of them have even confided in her, saying that he scares them. He has turned up to class bruised and bloody, and seems to relish in situations when his students are in danger.

Putting him on probation was the sensible option, the reasonable thing to do.  
Some vouch for his character, but that's not important. She doesn't care how good of a person he is, she just wants to know can he teach. Perhaps this is a shortcoming in her, but she doesn't see it that way.

Some one needs to take control of this school, and she thinks it should be her. She seems to be the only one who can look at things critically, without romanticising the whole affair.


	2. Chapter 2

She does bad things, worse things.

Dumbledore has let the school fall to ruin; students petrified, murderers on the loose, a student even killed last year - it doesn't bear to think about.  
Students have been horrendously bullied in classes, exposed to dangers and worst of all, not sufficiently educated in certain subjects to the standard they should be achieving. It's disgraceful, and yet everyone says Hogwarts is the greatest school there is.

She is doing it for the benefit of everyone, this process which she has come to think of as weeding.  
Some might think dandelions are pretty, but they are weeds nonetheless and they need to be exterminated. This is her job, and she does it well.  
She imagines Hogwarts as a garden. It is dark and twisted now but she will crack open the skylight and let in the pure air in, clean out the rot and cultivate a garden with discipline and management.  
Weeds need to be destroyed, and flowers need to be segregated to grow better. The occasional leaf will need sniping, for the the good of the plant, even if it doesn't understand that, and she understands that.

It wasn't always like this. For a period everything was glorious: she was the Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, and a member of Wizengamot, and if Hogwarts had fallen into a state of neglect, it was far from her world, that little empire she had carved out for herself, and it did not bother her.

Then Cornelius came to her, and began to talk. He said what a valuable asset she was, how efficient and determined, and even ruthless.  
Well. We do not know. We can only contemplate, but these do seem like the things he would say to make her feel like she was irreplaceable, needed, brilliant.  
He told her about Hogwarts, how it had fallen into a state of disrepair, not only the building itself but the teachers and students too. He tells her this in a way that says that she could change this, she could make it so much better, but only her.  
You would have power, he tells her, Defence against the Dark Arts teacher, eventually the High Inquisitor, -and he may have even dared to float the idea of Headmistress- and most importantly, they would respect her.

She agrees, elated on self-righteousness, determination and fierce pride- we presume anyway.  
But now she is here, and it has not been quite what you imagined. She is utterly alone, save for the Daily Prophet in the mornings, like a friend from home, and constant owls to Cornelius, some kind of link between her and the world she once knew.  
She wants to do this well. It cannot be a waste of her time, she cannot let all of this work go to rot, everything she has hoped for disapparate.  
She will have to discipline these halls.

The plan is that by teaching basic defensive theory as opposed to more practical work, she and the Ministry hope to decrease the hold that Dumbledore has over his students, and educate them formally, and not on whatever whim takes her.

Admittedly, she is ruthless, but she is never cruel. Cruelty causes pain and suffering, and no one is suffering here. Are safer classrooms a hardship, and does making sure that teachers are competent cause undue distress?  
Yes, it could be argued that her punishments are brutal, but she wouldn't agree. Take Potter for instance, that highly aggressive young man who constantly undermines her work.  
The boy has shown severe behavioural problems throughout the years; misdemeanours include stealing, open defiance of basic magical laws, an unprovoked attack on his aunt, implication in the return of a mass-murderer, and presence at the tragic death of an exemplary student.

He needs to be dealt with. She has many approaches that she could use, but it would be fruitless to attempt to convince him that his fervour and passion are misplaced, that his pride in Dumbledore is wasted and his righteousness frivolous. He has anger inside him and he will not listen.

The Ministry explicitly states that Lord Voldemort had not returned and that Harry Potter's claims are only to garner attention for himself.  
What proof does the boy have, she asks herself.  
He states that Cedric died at Peter Pettrigrew's hand; the same man who was killed years ago. He claims that the Dark Lord duelled him, but the echoes of his dead parents distracted He Who Must Not Be Named while he escaped.  
She does not need to explain why this story is not quite credible.

The boy repeatedly lies. He says the Dark Lord sprouted from the back of a teacher's head, a likely story. He says that Sirius Black is innocent, his mass-murdering godfather.  
He says that He Who Must Not be Named is back, in an attempt to draw the limelight back upon himself by resurrecting his old enemy.  
She has read his file, the young Mr Potter. Orphaned at a young age, troubled upbringing, textbook stuff.

How else then do we deal with weeds if they will not listen?  
Well, if they are choking everyone else, jeopardising the garden, then we deal with them swiftly and with force.  
The Minister agrees with this approach, and she would rather listen to the highest figure of authority rather than the ramblings of an old man who can barely run his school anymore.

And so she deals with the problematic student, because he must be taught not to tell lies.


	3. Chapter 3

Things fall apart.  
She is constantly disrespected for her efforts. Even her fellow teachers- her subordinates actually- openly defy her.

The students hold a meeting in a bar- a bar! The impudence of it!- and they discuss her, how awful she is. One student, reports say, impersonates her. The disrespect is appalling.  
Under the guidance of Potter and his crone Granger, the students are rallied to the cause of defending their school, of teaching themselves dangerous magic.  
Threats are even used, implying to maiming of a student at the hands of an object from Dervish and Banges.  
The students call themselves Dumbledore's Army. The audacity of it nearly hurts- they are practically begging her to expel them for conspiring to overthrow her.  
Although she attempts to quash the group, her efforts are ignored.

She deliberately delays granting Gryffindor permission to play Quidditch, and it is a direct message to Potter. Look at the power I have, it says. I can destroy you, boy. Stop your pathetic attempts at resisting.  
But Potter continues. The entire nasty affair culminates in Dumbledore admitting that he directed the group, and was behind this failed rebellion. She attempts to have him seized but he attacks her, the Ministry officials and even the two students present as part of his escape.  
She is now Headmistress, and yet, Dumbledore's old office will not open its doors for her. She is now Headmistress, but she is not loved, not respected. She is now Headmistress, and yet she feels powerless as ever.

The disrespect escalates into outright attacks; a vicious Niffler is placed in her office and destroys her only sanctuary.  
Students are also somehow making themselves ill in hef classes, and her only ally in this madness is a weak squib, the ineffective caretaker Filch.  
Back at the Ministry, she would have scoffed at the idea of allying heself with a squib- only one step above Muggle-Borns in her book- and it rankles that she is now are grateful for Filch's loyalty. How has she fallen so low, so fast?

Potter, that insolent scum, against her direct orders for him to stop lying, gives an interview with a tabloid magazine, known for publishing blatant lies. The boy has a vicious imagination, and certain details go beyond ridiculousness; the Dark Lord arising from a cauldron, and then stroking Potter's face? It is a troubling description, and only serves to prove that the boy has terrible issues.

The Weasley twins also cause havoc- and unbelievably decide to steal their brooms and fly away rather than continue their education.  
They must have had help; you cannot fly through the magical protection that surrounds the castle, it has to be lowered to pass through.  
A teacher must have aided their escape. She is being defied by those she is meant to be ruling.

She is failing, failing at the job she thought she could do, failing at the job Cornelius assured her would be easy.  
If she fails, it means another year here, in this hell-hole. The plan had always been that she would remain on as Headmistress for the years to come, but she cannot stand to think of that now. She despises Hogwarts, and what it has done to her.  
If she could just manage to wrangle control back, if she could make the place safe and controlled even just for a few months, then she could write to Cornelius and ask him to replace her with someone else suitable- and quite a few other teachers too- and let her return to the Ministry. He has to understand that she simply cannot do this anymore, that she cannot face another year of this. He must understand.


	4. Chapter 4

Potter and the Muggle-Born Granger are in her office when she arrives.  
She asks him why he is here, though the answer is written plainly for all to see, as he kneels by the fireplace, and yet he lies and says he has come for his broomstick, a likely story.  
He doesn't even seem to understand how stupid he sounds. Falsehoods weep out of the boy's pores these days. She pushes him away, disgusted.

The Slytherins, the only students who seem to have to come round to her methods, bring in Potter's accomplices.  
The Weasleys are the ones that catch her eye; siblings to those miscreant twins who ridiculed her publicly. These two share that blood, the same look. She remembers that the bright young Percy is their elder brother. Now he is a shining example of how a Pureblood wizard can flourish in the Ministry. By contrast, these two show how Potter's foul influence can corrupt. The boy, Ronald, is a prefect, and yet he lied to you about Peeves' whereabouts in an attempt to distract you. A prefect, driven to lying to his Headmistress by Potter. Potter has some disturbing way of dragging others down to his level and ruining their chances, polluting them with his ramblings.

She questions them. What could be so important that they would risk expulsion? The possibilities shimmer in front of her; they wanted to talk to Dumbledore, who might be orchestrating a rebellion from outside Hogwart's walls. It might have been McGonagall, who could be helping the students to overthrow you so that she could take her place as Headmistress!  
- She does not want the job for herself anymore, but that does not mean she wants it taken by force from her either. She will not relinquish her hold over Hogwarts to any Potter sympathisers, no matter how much she loathes it-

She sends summons for Snape. As someone who is close to Lucius Malfoy and shares some of his ideals, Snape is the closest thing she has to a Ministry worker here. He has been useful so far anyway, and she hopes that he will illuminate this matter.

Disappointingly, Snape is utterly useless when he is brought to her, and it seems he deliberately withholds Veritaserum from her. Of course she had to use more than three drops on Potter! The lies are so ingrained into every fibre of that boy's being that three drops couldn't loosen the grip.  
Perhaps it was Snape all along who has been helping the students! Snape, who pretended to play the Devil's Advocate but all along was siphoning information off her to give to Dumbledore loyalists. She puts him on probation until she can investigate into this further. There are more pressing matters that need to be dealt with first.

This is more than simple school discipline. This is an issue of Ministry security. Dumbledore is a fugitive, wanted for assault, for inciting a rebellion against the Ministry and endangering civilians by backing Potter's lunacy.

Everyone at the Ministry agreed that Potter - and Dumbledore to an extent- needed to be silenced. The boy needed to be discredited, for the good of the people, so that no one would ever believe his twisted lies again.  
She was the only one brave enough to act. She ordered the Demetors after him. She did it of her own free will, but that does not mean the idea came to her of her own accord. Hints might have been dropped, and surely someone noticed somewhere along the line. Questions must have been asked what a Ministry witch wanted with Dementors at some stage. But no one spoke out. They wanted this too. This was needed, and she was just the one who went and did it, but she feels her actions represent the entire Ministry.

Now that she thinks on it further, it could have been Black, his godfather, that Potter wanted to speak to. Black the mass-murdering maniac who helped his fellow prisoners out of Azkaban in January, murderers and torturers the lot of them.  
In times of war, Aurors were allowed use Unforgivable Curses. This is a war, a war between her and Potter. Potter stands for all that is ugly in the wizarding world, and just this once, isn't it worth it? One boy, who deserves punishment anyway, getting a little bit hurt is nothing, nothing in the scheme of things. His pain is nothing if it will help her catch the Death-Eaters, catch Black, catch Dumbledore. She believes that in this case, the curse is in fact forgivable, and so as she begins to say Crucio, she knows that Cornelius would approve.


End file.
